When Lisa Johnson attended a private school in Atlanta as a youth, she experienced racial and social isolation, a lack of cultural affirmation and countless microaggressions. When she enrolled her children in a Los Angeles private school decades later, her oldest child’s experiences, starting as early as kindergarten, mirrored hers.
Johnson was dismayed, but she was also determined to foster change for Black and brown students in private schools. In 2018, she founded Private School Village (PSV), an organization designed to help Black and brown students in kindergarten through 12th grade navigate life at independent schools and blanket them with culturally rich communal care.
Now, that work is expanding. I recently spoke with Johnson, who also serves as PSV’s executive director, about its new scholarship initiative, the Village Scholarship, and PSV’s plans to serve more students locally and (eventually) across the nation.
When did you first realize there was a need to create the Village Scholarship?
Actually, from talking to an admissions director at a local private elementary school. He made the point that every year, they’re able to find great candidates, but they don’t always have enough financial-aid to support the need. In the conversation, we talked a lot about the financial aid model, and I know that’s a model that works. But I also feel like we’ve kind of gotten set in our ways with respect to the model being what it is. And every year, we hear there’s not enough aid.
How does the Village Scholarship work?
We just launched it and are providing up to what’s in the equivalent of four scholarships for up to $10,000 each for the duration of a private elementary school experience. So that means if you come in at pre-K or K, that’s a seven- to eight-year run. If you come in at grade four, it’s the remainder of your time in elementary school. It’s an annual renewal. Parents apply, and we [award the scholarships] after schools have made their award of aid. We are trying to meet that gap.
It requires us to work collaboratively with our school partners and it also allows us to work closely with the parents because the way we’ve designed this, unlike traditionally when you get financial aid, it’s not portable, you can’t take it with you, you’ve got to stay at the school whether or not it’s a good fit or not because that aid is for that school.
Our scholarship is a portable scholarship in that you can go to another private school and take it with you — at least, take the need with you, and once you get the award there, then we will meet the gap.
How do you select students for the Village Scholarship?
It’s a mix of all of the traditional things you would assume to be true for scholarship, even if they are young. But we’ll be interviewing candidates, we’ll be working collaboratively with the school and, yes, it is hugely important that they understand the notion of this village and that they buy into the fact that we are better and stronger together.
In addition to the new scholarship, are there other ways you help families navigate the process of paying for school?
Yes, we’re having Chloe B. McKenzie [a researcher and wealth justice activist] come speak to us, and one of the things she talks about is the fact that when you have to demonstrate and prove your financial need, you are really being asked to experience your trauma potentially all over again. Just how the language is set up and how we feel about the process can be hugely demoralizing. And this is especially the case because we have a lot of middle-income families who aren’t used to having to ask for help, and tuition is getting more expensive, not less.
Do you have any other new offerings for this year?
The biggest thing on our docket this year, aside from the Village Scholarship, is our national expansion. I feel like for four years I have been telling people, “Wait, it’s coming,” and it is finally coming. We are expanding through a chapter model pilot program. This first year will be a pilot in California so we can learn what we don’t know. The model really is about community and parent engagement and empowerment, and that means you need to be able to get together in person as a community.
Learn more at privateschoolvillage.org.
